Flutter interact has brought a pre-Christmas gift in the live-stream on 11th Dec 19 for Flutter lover by announcing the latest stable version Flutter 1.12. The most loved framework Flutter for its cool functionality has now added with more efficient features and functionality. Google Flutter has been growing since its 1.0 release in Dec 2018 and has made a total of 5 stable releases to date. It has said, It has been an amazing year for Flutter as this year 5,303 issues have closed and merged 5,970 pull requests from 484 contributors.
Just like all other releases Flutter brings tremendous benefits and convenience for the developers. Flutter 1.12 has been expected to bring a visual refresh to support iOS 13 which includes complete dark mode, Cupertino widgets, UX tweaks, and a significantly enhanced add -to- app experience. We are going to explain each update in this article.
In the Flutter, 1.12, the developers have sustained their streak as they say with each release, “we’re just getting started” and continues to be true with this greatest release so far, which coming from 188 contributions, closing 4,571 issues and merging 1,905 PRs.
Furthermore, from event highlights, Flutter for web goes for beta, support for macOS, Adobe XD to Flutter plugin for designer, supernova, and a lot more has announced in the Flutter Interactive event.
Let’s explicit what is new in the Flutter 1.12 and its enhancements followed by the top 5 recaps of the keynote for Flutter.
Support for macOS alpha:
Flutter is now all set to support the macOS in addition to Android, iOS, and web. In the event held in New York City, Google’s Flutter interact unveiled that developing a Flutter project runs on the macOS is now just like developing in any other new Flutter project with ‘flutter create’.
The macOS alpha To enhance the experience of the Flutter desktop apps, developers have worked really hard on keyboard navigation and keyboard access to make their built-in set of UI widgets desktop-friendly. Moreover, to better accommodate the screen size differences between mobile and desktop Flutter 1.12 version includes the ability to change the app’s “visual density”. The macOS support in Flutter is considering in alpha for now and needs developers to be on either the dev or master version of the Flutter SDK.
iOS 13 Dark mode:
The biggest improvement announced in the Flutter interact 2019 that Flutter 1.12 features a visual to support the iOS 13 look and feel. It involves complete support to dark mode in the new iOS Cupertino widgets- CupertinoContextMenu and CupertinoSlidingSegmentedControl that are added into Flutter 1.12 aiming for pixel- perfection for iOS 13. The dark mode in widgets can automatically enable based on a device’s dark mode settings.
In addition, to make Flutter apps, feel and look like native apps on iOS 13 Google developers have improved scrollbar fidelity, provided for adaptive CupertinoAlertDialog padding, and allowed for min/max date constraints on the CupertinoDatePicker.
Flutter Web support hit beta:
In Flutter Interact, it has cheerfully announced that web support for Flutter is now in beta! The new released version Flutter 1.12 master, dev, and beta channels all provide improved support for web. Indeed, it is good news for developers. The latest Flutter 1.12 web support enables developers to use the same code, ship features quickly, and ensure consistency of experience across the devices.
To be specific, when you are on the beta channel and have enabled web support, you can not only create a new Flutter project for Android and iOS platform but now also includes a web. Moreover, a powerful Dart compiler that contains everything you need to compile and run the project same code in a browser.
Add-to-App:
Another major thing in Flutter 1.12 features is stable and official support to integrate Flutter into an existing Android or iOS app. It is specifically useful for Flutter Developers at the time of migrating a Flutter app rather than need to start developing an app from scratch. Add-to-App update is such a boon for developers!
Adobe XD to Flutter plugin:
Google UI framework Flutter now has a partnership with Adobe XD and the XD is available to Flutter plugins. The goal of Flutter to make designing easier and more effective along with allowing designers and developers to work together appearing as achieved with Adobe XD integration. The new XD in Flutter automatically converts the XD designs into code and creates a usable part of Flutter app development. It enables product designers to design and prototype effective user experience for mobile, web, desktop, and beyond.
Dart 2.7:
Everything of Flutter writes in Dart programming language. Along with Flutter 1.12, Google announced about Dart 2.7 at the same event. The update brings the stable support for “extension methods”, which was previewed in the Dart 2.6. It lets developers create convenient latest functionality and tack it on to any existing class.
The Dart 2.7 includes “null safety” features that help developers to grab potential mistakes. By marking the code that variable could be null, Dart’s tools make sure your code is for those times when they are null. Dart 2.7 is a special version with null safety enabled.
There are lots of fascinating things, and breaking changes are updated in the new release of Flutter. Some of the major changes explicit above and following are the other breaking changes as per the Flutter 1.12 Release notes:
Enhanced Flutter tooling experiences with the new version of DartPad
Upgraded set of Flutter Plugins with significant improvements
TweenAnimationBuilder released to create custom implicit animations
Enhance Text & Accessibility
Material changes to support Android 10, including a new activity zoom transition
Impressive improvement for iOS with two new widgets
Fixes severe crash & performance bugs
Multi-device debugging
Wrap Up:
Flutter is keep coming with its new versions and great improvements that pull developers’ community towards experiencing the framework. After all, it is presented and supported by Google, so it has to be enchanting. Well, if you haven’t installed the Flutter 1.12 yet, download it from the official site or update the milestone version and keep developing beautiful applications using Flutter.
PS: To learn more about Flutter 1.12 and Dart 2.7, visit the release notes Flutter 1.12 on its official website.
Sagar Bagsariya
Principal Mobile App Developer
by Sanjay kidecha
by Manav Patel
by Mihir Mistry
by Drashti Pandya
